Geographia Technica, Vol 11, Issue no. 2/2016, pp. 78-86
DO BYPASS ROUTES REDUCE NOISE DISTURBANCES IN CITIES? CASE STUDY OF CHEB (Western Bohemia, CZECH REPUBLIC)
Michal PREKOP, Martin DOLEJŠ
ABSTRACT: The increasing automobilization of society is accompanied by negative impacts on society, which also includes increased noise disturbances to which inhabitants are exposed. In an urban environment this fact is often solved by constructing bypasses and the benefit of these bypasses is disputable in many respects. The trend towards constructing bypasses has markedly applied to the Czechia, an important transit country due to its location, in the last decade. One of the traffic junctions that are used by the most in the Czech Republic is the city of Cheb, where diverting traffic from the arterial route has been solved by constructing a bypass route. In our paper we focus on the ex ante and ex post evaluations of noise loads to which inhabitants of the centre living along the former arterial route are exposed in the effort to give a true picture of changes in noise loads to which inhabitants are exposed. The evaluation itself is based on the results of the direct measurement which took place during two reference days before and after the construction of the bypass of the city of Cheb and on their statistical evaluation. There were no statistically significant changes in the noise situation before and after the construction of the bypass. The differences between individual days (F3,72 = 2.039; p = 0.116) and between the morning phase (p = 0.928) and the afternoon phase (p = 0.200) were not too marked. There was a marked difference in the traffic volume, especially that of trucks (-50 % in the morning phase and -26 % in the afternoon phase). The phenomenon induced demand was identified in the study area, where the traffic volume was spatially redistributed and especially the structure of vehicles running through was changed. A more marked reduction in noise loads would require other intervention in order to reduce the vehicular traffic and also monitoring the situation regularly.
Keywords: Bypass, Urban environment, Traffic noise, Transit, Cheb.
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